


The Friend You Didn't Pick

by flipflop_diva



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Spoilers, Canon Compliant, Comfort, Developing Friendships, Female Friendship, Gen, Light Angst, Missing Scene, POV Skye | Daisy Johnson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 06:44:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8046274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva
Summary: The first time Skye sees Bobbi Morse, she finds her tall, beautiful and the epitome of what she has always thought a SHIELD agent should be. What she doesn't find her to be is a good fit for the team. She's about to find out she is wrong.





	The Friend You Didn't Pick

**Author's Note:**

  * For [geckoholic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/gifts).



> Written as a gift for geckoholic for the GenEx Fest 2016.
> 
> Geckoholic, I'm so glad you adore Bobbi and Skye (I still have such a hard time calling her Daisy!) because I do too. I wish they had more scenes together. But this is based on your prompt of them bonding, so here you go. I hope you enjoy!

The first time Skye sees Bobbi Morse, Bobbi is walking down the halls of SHIELD, fresh off her undercover mission with Hydra, Jemma trailing in her wake. She is tall and beautiful and the epitome of what Skye has always thought a SHIELD agent should be.

She has heard more stories in the past two hours about who Bobbi is and what she has done than she is comfortable with, and when Bobbi barely glances at her as she walks by, Skye wishes, not for the first time, that she had just stayed away.

It’s a feeling that sticks with her for a while — for months actually. It’s not one she voices and not one she tries to let show, but she likes her ragtag team the way they were and Bobbi is just a reminder that things will never be the same.

But things are never meant to be the same, and Skye learns that the hard way when she is the one to change and it is her that is shunned by people who once said they loved her.

“You have to give them time,” says a voice almost in her ear, and Skye practically leaps out of her skin. She is sitting behind one of the computer monitors on the pretense of checking out the security systems of the base, but really she just wants time away from people.

She cranes her neck now to see Bobbi standing behind her, an almost concerned expression on her face.

Skye doesn’t know why — they’ve never _really_ talked before — but she finds herself saying the words she has been desperately wanting to speak.

“They’re supposed to be my friends.”

“They are.”

“Having powers doesn’t change me.” She pauses. “Does it?”

“Of course not.”

“Are you just saying that?”

“No,” Bobbi says. “Your powers are a part of you. For good or bad. But you control them. You decide who you should be with them. They know that too. They just need time to deal with it.”

Skye tries to smile. “Who thought you would be the most sensible person about this?”

“I’m full of surprises,” Bobbi says, and her lips curve into a real smile. “You should see my other secrets.”

•••

It’s six months later, after that first real conversation, and this time Skye is the one to go to Bobbi. She finds her in her room on the base, standing by the bed, staring down into a suitcase that has one folded white shirt lying neatly at the bottom. A pair of jeans and a pair of black boots sit on the plain white comforter. The small collection of items that used to be on the bedside table — a couple photos of people who look like they could be family members, a paperback copy of Jane Eyre, a phone charger and a figurine of a small copper-colored dog that Skye has never asked about — are scattered on the floor.

Everything else is how it’s always been, how it was the last time Skye was in here. Skye thinks that was before she was sent away to the safehouse by Coulson. It feels like a lifetime ago now.

Bobbi isn’t moving, but she’s resting heavily on the crutch beneath her arm. Her head is lowered, her hair in her face. Skye can’t see her eyes, can barely see her lips even, but she can read her expression in the slump of her shoulders and the tension in her fingers, the way they slightly curl into fists, and she can hear her breaths, more shallower than normal, in the small room.

“Are you leaving?” Skye asks as she steps further into the room, and she tries hard to make the question sound neutral, no judgment either way.

Bobbi doesn’t turn nor react in any way. Skye was quiet but Bobbi was trained to sense things like your teammate sneaking up behind you when you’ve left the door open.

“Yes,” Bobbi says in reply, and her voice is barely more than a whisper. She sighs, lifts her hand to rub her fingers across her temple. “No. … I don’t know.”

She straightens then, turns to look at Skye, and she looks like the Bobbi Skye remembers, the one who told her oh so long ago that she was still her despite her powers and that she just had to give the others time.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Bobbi says, and this time her voice cracks and her eyes lower and she looks again like the defeated, broken girl in the hospital bed, and Skye’s heart squeezes so hard she almost feels like she can’t breathe because from the second Bobbi landed in the midst of their team, she has always been the fearless one, the confident one, the one who knew exactly what to do.

And now …

Skye curses Grant Ward, for not the first time this week and not even the first time this day. She feels like that monster is forever casting a pallor over all of them, and if she could ever get her hands on him …

But she shoves that thought aside because it is neither here nor there at this moment, and instead she says, “What will you do instead?”

“That’s the problem, isn’t it?”

“You could stay.”

“I don’t know that I can fight.” Bobbi looks past Skye as she says this, like she’s looking into the horizon, maybe into the past, Skye isn’t sure.

“I started out as a hacker,” Skye says. “Jemma” — she freezes for a second, the name still painful on her tongue, her disappearance just one more reminder that too many things have already changed — “Jemma and Fitz started out as just scientists. The fighting was an accidental development.”

Bobbi makes a noise. It might be a laugh.

“I don’t even remember what I liked to do before all the fighting,” she says. “I can’t even remember life before SHIELD.”

“Maybe you could figure it out again now.”

Bobbi makes a face at that, but she looks like she’s thinking about it. She reaches down into the suitcase and lifts up the sole white shirt.

“Maybe I could,” she says.

“I like to have coffee,” Skye tells her. “In particular at that coffee shop down the street.”

“The one that Coulson says to avoid because you were starting to become a regular?”

“That’s the one.”

Bobbi tilts her head to the side. “Is that an invitation?”

“Do you want it to be?”

“I do like coffee.”

“Then consider it an invitation.”

•••

Bobbi finds her this time. It’s late at night, hours past midnight, and the only sounds in the entire base are small clicks and clacks from machinery and clocks and other things that tick by on a minute-by-minute basis. Everyone else is sleeping, or at least Skye thinks they are. 

She’s not, though. Instead, she’s sitting in the common room, in the dark, on the couch, her mind wandering. The television is on, the lights from the screen casting shadows across the room, but it might as well be off for all she is paying attention.

She lets her own images flash through her mind — the last time she saw Jemma, the last time she saw May, the last time she saw her parents.

She is so focused on these thoughts she almost doesn’t realize Bobbi has slipped into the room and sat down beside her until she blinks and Bobbi is just _there_. But May has taught her a lot, besides how to wield a weapon, and she is proud of herself for not jerking or startling in the slightest.

It’s been two weeks and Bobbi is still here — “I haven’t decided,” she says every time someone asks and people don’t ask anymore because they all want her to stay. It’s an unspoken feeling that they have already lost too much — but she always looks like she’s ready to bolt at the slightest hint that she’s making the wrong choice, whether in word or action.

Coulson has given her assignments in the lab — to help out Fitz and the others, he says, because Fitz is spending all his time trying to find Jemma — but everyone knows it’s also to keep her busy. She’s supposed to be doing physical therapy too, to get back on track for training and fighting, but Skye knows she doesn’t always go. She knows the others know that too but no one says anything.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Skye says to her now, to acknowledge her presence. She has the feeling Bobbi isn’t going to start the conversation.

“Nothing really new,” she replies, and Skye nods, even though Bobbi isn’t looking at her.

“Same here.”

They both are quiet for a time, their eyes watching the blinking television screen but neither of them actually seeing it.

Finally Bobbi breaks the silence. “How did you stop hating him?”

Skye doesn’t have to ask who she means. “I didn’t,” she says, and she sees Bobbi turn to look closely at her.

“I just stopped letting it consume me,” Skye clarifies. “He doesn’t get to have that type of power over me.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“It’s been one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.”

Bobbi leans back against the couch. Skye can her see hair shining in the slight light of the room.

“I feel like I’m never going to be the same,” she says, and Skye understands that completely, has felt that a lot the past couple years. After Ward betrayed them all and tore their team apart, after she got her powers, after she found out the truth about her parents. She knows, too, that this is why Bobbi is here now, why she is telling her this.

Skye twists in her seat, leans back against the couch, mirroring Bobbi. She turns her head to the side to smile softly at her.

“You don’t need to be,” she says. “You’ll figure it out.”

Bobbi doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t have to. Skye knows she believes her.

•••

The night Coulson and Fitz return from the portal is weird. There’s joy and sorrow and relief and grief.

Skye finds some peace in Lincoln’s arms, but she finds more later that night when she ends up in the gym, punching aimlessly at the bag made just for that purpose.

“Can’t sleep?” comes a familiar voice, and Skye realizes she almost expected her to be here, too.

It feels right somehow.

“It doesn’t feel real,” she says as she punches the bag again, and she knows Bobbi will understand.

“Do you feel a little like it should have been us there?”

It’s a question Skye has thought about a lot — what would she do if she could really get her hands on Ward, especially now that she has powers, now that she could do so much more damage than she ever could have before?

“I think it might have been better that we weren’t,” she answers, and she’s not sure if she really believes that, but it feels like she should and Bobbi nods in response, before gesturing to the punching bag.

“Think you’d be up for sparring instead?”

“You know I would.”

•••

The last time Skye sees Bobbi before it all goes to hell she is hiding behind a stack of crates as armed guards haul Bobbi and Hunter out in handcuffs. Hunter’s head is lowered, but Bobbi’s is held high, like she has no regrets, like she is perfectly content with whatever happens next. 

The last time Skye actually sees Bobbi is in a dark dank bar as she tips a shot glass toward her and Hunter and swallows down the whiskey. The alcohol is bitter against her tongue, and the lump in her throat makes it hard to swallow.

But life goes on and so does SHIELD and Jemma is her friend and so is Mack and Fitz. She’s not alone, and she knows Bobbi isn’t either.

Sometimes at night, though, she wishes things could be different.

It’s on one of these nights, when she stays up training way past the time the others trail off to bed, that she finds the postcard. It’s been slipped under the door to her room, and it’s lying there in the middle of the floor when she pushes her door open.

On the front of the card is a beach — blue waves, beige sand, white puffs of clouds in the sky. It’s a nameless beach; it could be anywhere, everywhere. There’s no stamp and no postage mark. No address either. But there are four words — I’ll see you again! — and a heart, and Skye knows exactly who it’s from.

She puts the card on the table by her bed, looks at it for a long time before she drifts off to sleep.

Someday they’ll see each other again, and Skye has a feeling that Bobbi will be there when she really needs her.


End file.
